To secure his safety, his father Robert III sent him to France, but his ship was intercepted and he found himself imprisoned in England. There he remained from 1406 until 1424. However, even though a prisoner, he received a very good education and became an important Scottish poet.
At last---in 1424 with an English wife, Joan Beaufort, at his side---he was allowed to return to Scotland. A ransom of 40,000 pounds had to be paid. James I was out for revenge; the family of Regent Albany, who had been responsible for his lengthy imprisonment, was destroyed and their possessions confiscated. He pursued those rivals descended from Robert II and several were executed. Once, at a banquet, one noble struck another across the face. James had the offending noble seized, the hand that had delivered the blow laid on the table, and the other noble was ordered to chop it off with his sword. Also, Paul Craw, a learned doctor, preaching against the Church of Rome, was arrested, tried and burnt to death at the stake.
In 1426 James I commanded that every Baron should kill all the wolf whelps they could find, and four times a year he commanded that a wolf hunt be kept; any tenant of the Baron's not attending was to pay a fine of one sheep. Also, every landlord was commanded to kill every young crow. If a crow was found in a tree, the tree was to be taken away from him, or he himself could fell the tree and pay a fine of five shillings to the king.
In about 1427 he decreed that no Scotsman was allowed to buy cloth or other goods from an Englishman, and no Englishman was allowed to sell any goods in Scotland unless he had special permission. No one was allowed to send gold or silver out of Scotland nor allowed to sell a horse to a foreigh country unless it was more than three years old. No one in Scotland was allowed to wear silk, furs or pearls unless they were a Lord of a Knight; and farmers were not allowed to wear coloured clothes but only plain ones made at home.
In 1428 every man or boy in Scotland was to be fined fourpence every time they played football and, to improve his people's aim, but to no avail, every man or boy over 12 years of age was required to shoot three arrows at a target every public holiday. In 1431 rebels supporting the Lord of The Isles defeated James I's soldiers and then attacked and ravaged the lands of Clan Cameron. Two years later, in 1433, Clan Mackay and Clan Sutherland engaged in a great battle near Longue, each clan had about 1,500 men but the Mackays almost wiped out the Sutherlands.
He tried to improve the kingdom's finances, even to extorting money from a protesting church. Slowly he restored peace by stopping abuses and showing concern for the Scottish people. However, nobles were still stirring up problems and, in 1437, a group of these under the Earl of Atholl murdered James I. Late at night they forced an entry and stabbed James to death in a vault beneath his bedchamber where the Queen had tried to hide him. It was a violent end for a man opposed to violence and a mismanaged plot which killed the king yet spared his six-year-old son, James II.

Source: Leo van de Pas

James I (Stewart), King of Scotland (1394-1437) and his wife, Joan Beaufort, is quite
a romantic story:  James was being sent to France for his education (and to protect him from his evil uncle, the Duke of Albany, who would inherit the throne if something happened to James), but was shipwrecked in England, and spent the next ten years as a 'guest' of the English Kings Henry IV and Henry V.  Although he was a prisoner, he wasn't locked away in a tower, but  took part in the life of the court.  He received a good education, and passed his time writing poetry, notably a long poem called The King's Quair, which is all about how he saw Joan Beaufort walking in a garden and fell in love with her at first sight, etc.  Eventually,
he returned to Scotland, where he made the vow; "If God grant me but the life of a dog, I will make the key to keep the castle, and the bracken-bush the cow".  This didn't suit the Scottish nobility, who burst in when he was in bed with his queen and murdered him.  They had arranged for the beam that barred the door to be missing.  One of the queen's ladies, noticing this, tried to bar the door by putting her own arm through the staple, but the conspirators smashed the door , and her arm.  She was called 'Kate Bar-Lass' after that. Joan Beaufort became Regent for her young son, James II, and managed to track down and execute all the
men who had killed her husband.  

contributed by Sandra